Week 9: Delivery

PDF Download: Newsletter: Week 9

Another delivery down here in week 9! These last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity and changes around the project room.  In addition to our ETC Halves presentation preparation and delivery, we also did some major restructuring of our the project based on feedback from Sony at the end of Week 8.

Our game, BumpBlasters, came along nicely in terms of features and mechanics. The gameplay was coming along nicely, but by the end of the second week of development, we were lacking a solid theme for the game beyond “aliens in space are fighting”. Subsequently, the game felt static and story-less. After talking to Sony and our advisers, we spent Thursday evening and Friday morning brainstorming for theme and story, coming up with the following 2 ideas:

Crazy Chefs: 4 Chefs are taking part of a cooking challenge with a very irritable famous chef. After one too many screw ups, Chef Bamsley stomps his foot so hard he breaks the earth and the 4 chefs begin plummeting through the mantle. On their way through the earth they must throw food to propel themselves around to dodge stalagmites and stalactites and hopefully make it out the other side in one piece!

Falling Robots: 4 Mining robots from rival corporations find a planet composed of 98% Newsletter9Pic1diamond! Only one company may hold the rights for mining, however, so the first one to the surface claims all! The 4 ‘bots charge the planet and plummet towards the surface, though the planet’s rings, upper atmosphere, lower atmosphere, and eventually crystal caves as they fight to knock each other out and be the only survivor at the end.Newsletter9Pic2Newsletter9Pic3

As a team, we liked idea 2 better because it played more to our art strengths and would afford   us some reusability of assets. With this stronger theme in mind, we re-pitched our game to Sony along with a  major switch in art style, and they were pleased with the new direction we were taking. Of course, now we only had a week left in the cycle to deliver.

Through the tireless efforts of the team, we managed to produce an entire new art style for the game, as well as set up the new falling and dodging mechanics. We did not have the time to implement everything we wanted to, such as the extra stages of falling through atmosphere and the planet core, but we are pleased with the direction we took and how it turned out in the end. As a team we feel that this game is a great vertical slice of what we wanted to do more fully, and given more time we could create a complete, fun experience.

– Team PlayStation Ignite